My S is obsessed with boat-building and wants to build a boat for himself. I'm trying to get him to find a course and sign up for it. Any ideas on the best way to start?
By the way, sounds plausible and familiar. I think you just wrote my story in some regards.
OwnIt - Thank you for letting me thread-jack my thread
There are two main classes of boat builders. There's the "boat people" (Bring Out Another Thousand) and the people who just like messing around with carpentry and sailing. I fall into the latter category.
Relatively simple and fun sailboats can be built for cheap using plywood and construction adhesive and a tarp from the hardware store for a sail. There's a truism I feel that the smaller and cheaper that a boat is, the more likely it is that it will be used. What I like as well is that once you are actually out on the water people with the "fancy boats" who actually are using them tend to be fascinated and impressed with my little home-made contraptions.
For a start you may want to pick him up one of the several home-built boat books out there. I strongly recommend one written by an aquaintance of mine Gavin Atkin called "Ultrasimple Boat Building - 18 plywood boats anyone can build". Gavin has a design called a "mouse" that I have built a paddling variation of that I use on my local river. If you look online there's an even simpler version called a "Flats Rat". More easily found than Gavin's book are ones by "Dynamite Payson" in his "Instant Boats" series. Those boats are a bit more complex to build but the book is easier to find.
My "main" boat is one that I built a few years ago - a Stevenson Projects Weekender - a 16' gaff rigged sloop that hasn't seen the wet for a few years now - see my earlier comment about size and cheap. It was a very fun build but needs a car to tow, a fair amount of water and took me a few years to complete.
All these little, light boats should only be used on relatively calm inland waters. I'm not sure where you are but hopefully that is available to you. Another advantage of a cheap boat is that if you crack it up, you can patch it and move on with little angst.
Hope that helps and thanks for taking an interest. If I can help more, don't hesitate to ask.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
AP: This is going to be a bit longer than your question but I think the question deserves an answer.
G: wow, I deserve nothing so appreciate you responding.
AP: Well - first off, she never really told me why she felt a need to stray. When I pressed her before I found out that she had been seeing OM for the better part of a year already her reasons were: - sometimes when I complimented her I didn't sound sincere - sometimes when I had too much to drink she felt like I would talk down to her - she didn't want us to end up like her parents bickering in a nursing home (we hardly ever argued)
G: geez; that’s a really unsatisfactory answer.
AP: In talking to her friends later to a person they all made a point of saying that she never had anything negative to say about me.
G: I have heard the same, even from stbx.
AP: Now - with that said, I wasn't and am still not perfect. I was fat - still rather chunky. I drank too much beer - still like it but less. I can be a bit of a pompous @ss. I have had odd(ish) hobbies like building small boats which I can get wrapped up in.
G: hmmm...but were you always like this and she got fed up with it or did you become more so over time? I am far from perfect. I have always been slim and attractive and this actually became an issue for stbx because she felt she was fat and unattractive. Yes, I can be an @$$ but not my day to day persona. At my worst, I am quiet, reserved, aloof, elitist and/or condescending. I have no odd hobbies and my regret is that I gave up my hobbies in M and family life—getting those back now.
AP: As far as my own opinions of the "why" - what it boils down to in large part is her own selfishness. She was and probably still is a very selfish and self-centred person.
G: but was she always that way or did she become that way? My stbx was always selfless and at b d she said I can’t be selfless anymore...I lost myself. It’s time to be selfish and put my own interests first!
AP: She liked nice things and felt constrained that even with our 6 figure income that she couldn't have the nice things she wanted. As a bit of back-story we had a lot of personal unsecured debt caused by bad decisions by both of us and had only in recent years gotten to a point where we had disposable income but it was also a point where we needed to focus on preparing for retirement. I remember waffling about buying a new high-end briefcase and her pushing me saying "well just buy it".
G: here I think I was in denial. In my mind, she was not materialistic. In reality, she was and I spoiled her. But no matter how much money she spent, it was never enough. Her OMs are my opposite meaning they are not professionally successful and have no money. She says after D I will still control her because she will be dependent upon alimony. I suggested she not take alimony if she wants to be independent of me which she thought was absurd.
AP: Theoretically the label of "cluster-B" or narcissist could be applied to her. She hated being alone and constantly looked for affirmation for even the most trivial of tasks.
G: so when I read 5LL one of her most important was words of affirmation and I realized I didn’t give that to her. This was the big opening for OMs.
AP: Add on to that the horrible chemical mix that I've been told is menopause, an empty nest from kids moving out, me being away at work for 14 hours / day, her parents having a near death experience and the trauma of providing personal care for them and then moving them into a nursing home.
G: do you think if you worked less it would have made a difference?
AP: Mix that with her changing from selling apples and baked goods to managing a liquor store and her forming a whole new group of enabling friends then you have some combustibles.
G: yes, all the new friends definitely did not help my situation. She created a whole social network apart from me with a lot of divorcees.
AP: The spark was OM. A recent widower who she had known for years that she started going out for innocent drinks etc with. He was well off, semi-retired from running a dairy distribution business (yes - the milk-man) and had come in to a large insurance settlement when his wife passed (my STBX would brag about that to her friends who were horrified). She is charming and rather cute. He was lonely and hurt. Kaboom.
G: yes
AP: According to rumours I heard both before and more so after bomb-day she had cheated before. She certainly had shown poor judgement and I believe that there had been at least close calls in the past. Genetically her father and siblings were all classic narcisist types and had all had multiple affairs (and stayed married). How much genetics played into this I don't know. She used to be disgusted by infidelity.
G: FIL is a narcissist but stbx always hated that about him...he also had a loose interpretation of fidelity and yes, stbx was repulsed by that.
AP: So - She was predisposed to cheat. She had a man who she liked who was very likely actively pursuing her. She had family and friends enabling her, some quite aggressively (especially her sister who hated me and told her glorious stories of her own adventures in infidelity).
G: yes
AL: She had an opportunity to live the material life that she realistically would never have with me. She took it.
G: in my case, she’s giving up her material life
AP: In hind-sight I feel that it was perhaps inevitable. If not with this guy, then with some other one presuming in our rural area she could have found and charmed another well off man.
G: I have been asking myself that question. Was this inevitable?
AP: For those reading this - please don't pick it apart and tell me to examine myself more closely and find more faults. I've been down that road. I have no interest in changing myself into a man who my STBX would be attracted to. Perhaps I am that sort of man and always have been. Perhaps not but I am pretty comfortable in my own skin and to me that's what matters. I feel that she left by her own choice and for her own reasons running "to" something and not "away".
G: I think that is an awesome perspective.
AP: Gordie - I don't know if this helped or not - but as a fellow voyager on these seas - since you asked - I have answered honestly. I don't know if any of this story resonates with you or not but I think from what I've read that at least some parts of it may.
G: wow, very helpful! You have no idea how much.
Gordie 40s W 40s M20+ kids 2016 BD W fantasy affair w OM1 I do everything wrong 2017 I start to DB W says TLTL files for D PA w OM2 2018 I do LRT W drops filing and OM2 situation slowly improving
To summarize the answers to your questions - no - I don't think that there was anything that I could have done that would have changed the outcome. Realizing that whether I am right or wrong has been an important part of my own healing.
It is scary sometimes how so many of our stories are so very similar. Human nature isn't perhaps as variable as we might think.
I wrote on Coly's thread earlier and I think to you as well an opinion that when two people fall in love that we put on "mirrors" and try to become the person we think that the other person wants us to be. When things work well, those mirrors are more transparent and don't so much reflect as reveal. We can also in time absorb those traits that make us compatible. In some cases though, those mirrors are only masks and that is why we as the LBS are so shocked when the masks fall and we find that there was a completely different person behind that mask all along.
There are no easy answers. There are no time machines that allow us to go back and change the past. There is only the journey and a misty vision of a Far Shore.
Good luck.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
Your posting is spot on and I couldn't have said it any better.
Sit quietly, the answers will reveal themselves when you least expect them to. The past is gone, the present is a gift and you need to focus on today, allow the future to reveal itself when it is ready.
Great insights here. Thank you for the boat building advice. We are going to look into the books and I will work to try to keep S's expectations in check.
In some cases though, those mirrors are only masks and that is why we as the LBS are so shocked when the masks fall and we find that there was a completely different person behind that mask all along.
I've been thinking this lately about XH. Who was he? I thought I knew him. I used to be able to guess what he was thinking, and freaked him out sometimes just for fun. I thought he was very predictable too - in a nice way.
However, now I'm not so sure. Maybe MLC has replaced him with an alien, but maybe he is just uncovering his real self. A lot of the literature on this says that after MLC it's common for the MLCer to retain some of the new habits/persona they pick up. I'm wondering whether it's more likely that they are uncovering things that were always there but hidden.
New thread time I think. This one is just about full and I think that we are entering the third act. Hopefully not one like most Shakespearean dramas where everyone dies. Perhaps it may become "guy meets girl". Guy makes a pie is more likely. Good thing that I like pie.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
